“So here you are, after all! I thought I should find you here.”
She had not heard him come and was startled into a cry.
“You!” she gasped, and lifted eyes in which the telltale signs of tears were still quite evident, so evident that, with a woman's instinct to hide them, she caught up the necklace and held it toward him.
“See what I've found!” she exclaimed.
But he paid no heed. Instead, manlike, he proceeded, quite unconsciously, to say the one thing that could hurt her most.
“I looked for you at the hotel first, then I came on up here. I knew you wouldn't go till I came!”
The color that had flooded her face at the sound of his voice faded again. She was quite white as she asked quietly:
“How could you know I would stay?”
He laughed easily, settling himself confidently on the moss at her side.
“Because I hadn't paid you yet,” he answered gaily. “Don't you think that was clever of me, Wildenai?”